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The new Duke engine concept.......


Tony
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I don't like it - vastly over-complicated and I noticed straight away that they said zip about the head gasket seal. You need to have a sliding gasket to seal the combustion chambers - so if Mazda couldn't make a simple rotor seal last, how the heck are they going to make a durable head gasket work?

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Before you get too excited, have a look at some of the earlier attempts to exploit the same (or similar) concepts. The format was of particular interest for torpedo engines because the tubular shape.

 

http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/unusualICeng/axial-ICeng/axial-IC.htm#dy

 

The "swashplate" design seems to me to have some basic practical faults for use in an IC engine (the efficient transmission of torque to the drive shaft for one).

 

But if it is turned the other way round, drive the swashplate and use the pistons to pump a hydraulic fluid, it makes a very efficient high speed, high pressure pump and I have seen it used widely in aircraft applications.

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Sorry Tony, but I've never really had a serious look at the matter, though it is obviously a huge practical problem given the extreme (not to say dynamic) environment in which sealing has to be maintained.

 

In the days when I designed pumps, the equivalent components could be made from a range of materials to cope, for example, with differential expansion and lubrication. We could port pressure from the high-pressure side of the pump onto the outside of the sealing plate/gasket so that the clearances diminished as the pressure rose; and we could run the device up to speed, getting oil filled clearance from the Michell effect, before closing a by-pass valve and bringing the outlet side up to pressure.  There may well be similar technical dodges that could be used in a swashplate I.C. engine but I am not aware of them.

 

I would expect a firm like Ricardo to be up to speed on these issues or the I.Mech.E library might have something.

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